Week 4 – Digital Community and Blogging; Tumblr Case Study
A German philosopher named Jürgen Habermas developed the concept of the "public sphere" in the 1990s to help explain how society's social and technological developments have changed through time. It serves as a forum for public discussion of societal concerns and problems, serving as the foundation for political discourse and thereby influencing political action.
According to Bruns and Highfield (2016), the traditional public sphere is now made up of micro-publics or communities. ‘None of which are mutually exclusive but which co-exist, intersecting and overlapping in multiple forms’, is crucial for understanding the ongoing structural transformation of ‘the’ public sphere (Bruce & Highfield 2016).
A perfect example that depicts micro-publics or digital communities is blogging, especially on Tumblr.
If we’re looking into now, it is safe to say that I’m a newbie to Tumblr as I’ve never really used it or even showed any interest to understand how the platform works. I definitely am aware that it's not as popular as it was between 2012 and 2014. So, I did a little research on Tumblr and what’s it all about.
Tumblr is known as a social media platform and microblogging website that was created by David Karp in the year 2007. Currently, an American software company called Automattic, owns the website and is demonstrating that they are very distinct from other social media platforms out there.
Tumblr has a few functions to it and the main ones are;
Custom Domain/Anonymity; it is not necessary for users to have a ‘real name’ to create an account on Tumblr, so it is truly personalized.
Customized Design; Users are able to customize their Tumblr account with the variety of available themes.
Use of Hashtags; Tumblr was the first social media platform to utilise hashtags to create a community of people with the same interests.
Relatively public; The platform does not require users to follow other users in order to view their posted content.
I have always been curious about why Tumblr’s active user base suddenly stopped growing like how it used to, so I did some independent research to figure out why it got out of favour. The big question here is, what happened to Tumblr that once used to be a popular platform to connect?
Through a mini research that I have conducted, I discovered a few causes for the decline of Tumblr’s, and they are;
Emergence of new media platforms; users turned to other platforms that has better creative tools to offer, such as Instagram, TikTok and Discord (Maheshwari 2023).
Lack of app modification; Unable to modify the application with new features that reflect the trends or culture of media platforms that already exist.
Banned NSFW content.
Along with my research, I found one of the required materials to be quite intriguing because it discusses how feminist teenage girls like to participate in different types of feminist action on their favourite platforms. To justify, a Tumblr user claims the platform portrays feminism as a "proper black hole." This is made possible by people's ability to anonymously share their own experiences, which may aid those who are going through a similar situation (Keller 2019). In conclusion, i do believe Tumblr has a chance to make its wat back up in the media industry by implementing a few improvements.
References
Keller, J 2019, “Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms’, Social media + society, vol. 5, no. 3, SAGE Publications, London, England, p. 7.
Maheshwari, M, 2023, Is Tumblr Dead? Reason Why No One Is Using Tumblr Anymore, viewed 9 May 2023, The SocioBlend Blog, <https://socioblend.com/blog/is-tumbl-dead-reason-why-no-one-is-using-tumblr/15/04/>.
University, W.G, and University, F, 2023, What Are Tumblr’s Best Features for Bloggers?, ThoughtCo, viewed 9 May 2023, <https://www.thoughtco.com/tumblr-features-for-bloggers-3476404.
Bruns, A & Highfield, T 2016, Is Habermas on Twitter? Social media and the public sphere, in G Enli, A Bruns, AO Larsson, E Skogerbo & C Christensen (eds), eprints.qut.edu.au, Routledge, United States of America, pp. 56–73.
https://eprints.qut.edu.au/91810/41/Is%2BHabermas%2Bon%2BTwitter.pdf